Dime Novels From Oblivion

Cheering crowds lined the street, and confetti rained from the windows Medals gleamed on the broad chests of strapping straight-backed lads in uniforms creaseless and pressed. In a smoked-filled room just above the parade route were the invalids. No one on the street had any idea about the convent of mangled men were watching the procession from a dingy smoked-filled room, looking out at the world from between closed blinds. Their ears were torn between the crashing cymbals and blaring horns of the marching band and the screams of men whose minds were permanently trapped in a waking nightmare; only death could end. The crowd below couldn’t hear their cries. For the invalids, the parade was morbid curiosity, maybe even a torment for some. Victory is a hollow word to an 18-year-old kid with a face melted by the sticky flames of napalm. The invalids were casualties of the war that had been too unfortunate to die. They were not to be commemorated with a field of ivory white crosses. T

Palden was born only eleven years ago was but his body a vessel for something infinite.  He was the divine force that powered the quantum machinery of the cosmos in living form. It was proclaimed that behind the child's squinty eyes were the mind of the universe. That's why he was Emperor, a god wearing a man's flesh. The child's slight body was adorned in imperial dress woven from fibers worth many times the lives of the subjects who crafted it. It was a flowing tapestry of gold and jade that incorporated designs to intricate they were almost hypnotic to the human eye.  The godchild lived in a palace built on the eastern side of the highest summit that loomed over his imperial capital. The monument that would stand long after the demise of this latest mortal incarnation of the EmperorEmperor was a reminder to the people who lived in its shadow he was always watching. Albeit it with vision blurred by a permanent stigmatism. His official shrine was at the peak of his

An icy autumn rain turned the barbed wire covered enclave of dirt into a muddy gash. The ground oozed as if the earth itself was bleeding beneath the boots of the soldiers living in the sprawling mass grave. On the edge of winter, the days were short, and the sun had already fallen over the front. A shroud of dust and smoke smothered the light of the stars. There were only the glowing red ends of the cigarettes the soldiers clutched in their trembling hands. Victoria or "Vicky" was a short-haired terrier with pointed ears and rings of brown fur around her eyes she wore like a mask. Vicky was walking along the sodden trench with her nose to the mud. Her flopping ears stiffed, and she suddenly stopped. "I think Vicky sees something," said a young soldier in tattered khakis, his quivering hand struggling to bring a cigarette to his lips. The sensory overcharge of war quickly rattled the minds of men, but Vicky stayed sharp. Nothing, not the distant thundering of art

Lingering awareness of our own mortality is probably the most punishing consequence of self-awareness. Death is a downer; it’s in the background of our entire lives. It stirs in us melancholy thoughts during our fleeting moments of joy, and it causes sleepless nights, it renders any action or accomplishment pointless. Human consciousness has risen to the level of neurotic, but it seems natural humans have an obsession with the end of ourselves and all things. No matter what we tell ourselves, no matter what our endeavors and their outcomes, it was all a foregone conclusion. This collection of short stories confronts the finality of death, the undoing of all that is. What do you do when the only thing you know every breath, every beat of your heart, and every thought could be your very last? Click here to get your copy of the fourth installment of Dime Novels From Oblivion! 

In a small wood-paneled study, cramped between heavy bookcases ladened with dusty moth-eaten volumes, lit by the pale grey light from a solitary window was Alexander Golitsyn, the third considered by a dwindling number of people to be an Emporer. Alexander was sitting at a desk barely big enough to accommodate both his diary and porcelain teapot. "All my efforts to hold onto anything in life has been like trying to clutch water in my hands. Life is over, yet I go on living. There is no reason left for me to be here. I'm just waiting for my last heartbeat and my last breath." A knock a the study's door brought Alexander's hand to a halt. He didn't know it when he put the pen down, but this melancholy paragraph was to be the last attempt at poetry he'd ever make. "Yes? What is it!" Alexander huffed with tobacco chared vocal cords. "I have an urgent message for the sovereign!" an earnest young man answered through the door. "Fine

It was a bright and mild morning. A few billowing white clouds drifted lazily across the ocean blue sky, the gentle sun reflected off the dew coated grass and flowers, giving the world a shimmer. A human stream filled the streets and sidewalks as the city rose to life. One lonely widower had a different reaction to the beautifully emerging day. Hibiki closed the shutters on his windows, locked the door, and sat his tired old body on a reclining chair in front of a blaring television. To Hibiki, the day’s crystal sky was a dark omen and a visceral reminder of that horrific moment all those decades ago when a flash of light took away 100,000 people. Hibiki had been there when it happened. He was a doctor at the time, and while the bomb canceled the workday for most everyone else but for people in Hibiki’s line of work, there was an additional layer of hell to endure. “Please...Please..help my daughter!” Hibiki could hear a woman pleading from the street below. With a trembling hand,

The river was like a massive indigo snake coiling in the shadow of the canyons its eternal flow cut out of the very earth. Somewhere along the watery corridor, settled human life grew out of the muddy banks. The tribe sustained itself on the arterial river, steadily expanding and contracting with the rhythm of its flow like a beating heart. As far as anyone in the tribe knew no other arrangement had ever existed. The river had birthed them, molding sand and clay into flesh, and infusing the husks with its life-giving waters. Life under the desert’s smooth turquoise sky seemed safely stagnant. There was no inkling, no deciphered omens, absolutely no hunch of the approaching cataclysm lurking just out of sight obscured by the landscape’s jagged ridges. Not far from the isolated patchwork of green and brown earth settled by this tribe, the scion of ancient god well into his twilight years was on the cusp of fulfilling his divine purpose. Harmakar was sitting in the dust staring into t

When Jack arrived at the nursing home with his family, the director quickly and quietly took him aside and explained to him today's visit might be "difficult." Jack, his wife Anne, and their twin daughters now both 10 followed an orderly through a windowless hallway paved with blue carpet that promoted one of the girls to ask if grandma "lives in a hotel?" Her room was on the far end of the hallway. For Jack, the walk always felt a little bit longer. When they stopped at her door, the growing sense of dread had turned to nausea. Every time he saw her, she seemed further away, and not just mentally. Her thinning hair would be whiter her flesh more shriveled. Her decaying mind kept her obscured behind a veil of memories. The past was more real to her than the present.  When the orderly opened the door, Jack saw his mom sitting up in her bed wearing a VR helmet with a rare but pleasant smile on her face. "I have to warn you she can get pretty mad when w

When we couldn’t hear the helicopters anymore, we knew they’d abandoned us. Though from their point of view we’d be MIA. At least until they saw our dismembered corpses being paraded through the street. There were just three of us. A Seargent, a PFC, ad myself. We had no way out. Certain death was on the other side of the door. All we could do was wait. Crouching in the dark, watching the door counting our last breaths, thinking our final thoughts. The walls were paper thin. We could already hear them searching apartments just down the hall. Screams were answered by bursts of machine gunfire. It was too dark to see all the rats, but we could hear their claws tapping on the floor. They were coming to scavenge the softening flesh of the bodies piled on the bed. A fat one brushed up against my foot, and I kicked the back end of its plump body as it scurried away. A few units over someone squeezed the trigger and bullet snapped in my ear. There was a flash of pain and the warmth of spi

From the deepest sleep, at a moment when my mind and spirit had wholly unbound themselves from this mortal coil, I found myself among the clouds. High enough to look down upon the entirety of my family’s capital with the same view as God himself. It all lay beneath me. The bustling plazas built in the shadows of the majestic peaks of our ancient cathedrals in the heart of the old city. A center connected by webs of smooth lantern-lit roads and thoroughfares to the steadily encroaching smog shrouded industrial districts built along the banks of the winding river that bisected the city. I took this omnipotence for granted for at that moment it was what had always been. Yet, I was keenly aware that this was the first time I had noticed the startling dimensions of the faceless steel buildings. The towering smokestacks cast shadows longer than any castles spire and with a far greater reach than the crowning cross of any cathedral. Somewhere a steam whistle screamed loud enough for the e

"Alright, allow the Jung-Unit 2-6 hours to fully integrate itself with your neurology. If you start experiencing headaches, insomnia, nausea, seizures, or hallucinations, please call user support." This friendly warning was the last thing the sales girl named Alex told Josh about his new purchase. Just before, he walked out of the glass pyramid that wasn't a store but a "gateway," and only after friendly technicians had injected a microscopic brain-altering machine into his blood.  Alex didn't seem particularly worried about these potentially lethal side effects, so neither was Josh. It was with the most profound conviction Josh believed the power of information technology made humanity the master of its own evolutionary path. While Josh was walking to the bus stop, a machine a fraction the size of a grain of sand was busy weaving itself into his nervous system. When it finished, Josh's physical brain would be powered by the latest in 6G network technolo

I'm happy to announce I've put out a second volume of previously published short stories. If you're into diabetic vampires, terrorists with borderline personality disorder, murderous yuppies, and embarrassing moments in the afterlife then you'll wanna check it out!  Click here to purchase the Kindle edition

John wasn't sure how long it had been since he died. Nothing ever changed on the seemingly infinite plane of nothingness. He hadn't aged. He and everyone else there looked exactly the same as the first day he arrived. The force of time had no meaning in the vast emptiness. He was moving slowly up in a line where he could see no end and no beginning. He held what looked like a massive deli ticket that had the number 8,456,435,434 printed on it.  The line contained people from all walks of life who had died in a variety of different ways. Geography often played a rather significant role in this. Of course, some people had simply made it to a ripe old age and had gently drifted off into death, but there seemed to be fewer and fewer of those arriving. Far more often, John was meeting victims of war, famine, disease. There were also plenty of people who had decided to expedite their addition to the line. John had met some of them, too many to count. Just in front of him, there was a

Existence is far too transitory a state to comfortably inhabit. Everything is, for a while, until it isn’t. What fundamental aspects of you or your world currently are but will inevitably cease to be? Are you dreaming? In a simulation? Is everything just as it seems, but in just a few seconds, someone is going to kick open your door and blow you away with a shotgun? If so at one point in the past, do you suspect you and this other individual were set on this collision course?  Was it some point in the last few years or was this event set in motion long before your existence by forces of such a macro nature they are imperceptible to us? Can this be considered fate or is fate just a euphemism for chaos? The twin nuclear reactions that snuffed out hundreds of thousands in a flash of light hotter than the Sun each occurred in 1/1 millionth of a second. The cities became rumble and the people left only shadows. They were until they weren't. 

Over the years, I've written several "flash fiction" stories that I fortunate enough to see accepted and printed by various publishers around the globe. Flash fiction pieces are generally 1,000 words, or less so this first volume comes out to a mere 32 pages, perfect for a commute or just for some leisurely afternoon reading and it's only 99 cents! If you enjoy my work, please consider purchasing a copy here:

It is me whose going away but from my perspective, the world is what’s shutting down, gradually like a carnival closing at the end of the night. The spinning rides glowing with electric fire sat quiet and inert as they were dismantled and quietly packed away Dimming shadows on the wall murmur about me in the past tense. Sometimes I try and speak, but I am inaudible to these living apparitions. Their names slide away with everything else. My memories flicker and blur like degraded film. I arbitrarily mutter the words I hear in these living dreams, and it betrays my thoughts to anyone close enough to understand. It is physically watching time disintegrate. The physical and metaphysical dis-entwine the body, the vessel that sustains what is behind the eyes, the soul if you’d like dissolves in the still and frigid. Experience itself is destroyed along with me. What I am reliving will soon never of happened to anyone.

The podcast studio was the size of a large closet. In the middle of the room was a table with four mounted microphones in the center, two facing right, the other two pointed left, and a small soundboard set up on the upper right corner. The plaster wall was painted black with the words Information Defense Force painted in bold red letters across the surface. Todd and Ryan were sitting across from each other, their faces illuminated by the glow of their open laptops. Ryan, the host, was in a plush leather office chair, while Ryan sat in a folding chair. Today, IDF was going live. The corporate-Marxists Hollywood machine had just launched a new phase in its ongoing cultural assault, so it was up to self-appointed leaders like Todd to rally their troops and let them know what they could do to fight back. "The SJWs have taken off their gloves now." Todd declared. "If what they're doing doesn't have you convinced they want to destroy the very basis of western cul

There are people you have no idea even exist and who at this moment you may have no conceivable connections to who will inflict pain on you so deep it will ingrain itself into your neurological wiring. There are other people out there though,  whose existence you are unaware of and who are just as oblivious to your existence who upon you will replicate the same pain that emotionally deformed you. It is a misguided form of vengeance. Likely, you'll only ever have the vaguest notion of what happened, but there is also a chance you'll feel perpetual and tremendous guilt for it. It doesn't matter, though, as this is inevitable. They have a word for it "cycle."

King Agesilaus and his entourage stood on the beach pensively watching the golden sun ascend from beneath where the twin planes of turquoise water and crystal sky merged into an endless gleaming expanse of blue. The morning tide was coming in, and the otherwise still waters were clawing their way up the shore, breaking over the rocks and spreading out over the sand before slowly withdrawing and coming in again. A slight breeze swept over the water and through the King’s coarse ash-colored beard and to the discernment of his entourage, the great man audibly shuddered. “Posiden approaches,” Agesilaus cooly announced. The men all trained their eyes, several meters they could see long white hair drifting in the water.  Everyone behind the King took a step back when they saw a wrinkled forehead break through the surface followed by eyes with the electric glow of lightning. He was still far out, but already his broad shoulders and impossibly sculpted chest were already several feet above